Iris: How A Family Grows
Let me tell you a story.
On the day that I wrote this, I completed my 4th #1000wordsofsummer. Over the last 14 days I wrote just shy of 15,000 words. My favorite part of this year’s challenge is that I did something I have never done before. I started a story and sustained it, 1,000 words at a time, one day at a time, whether or not I knew where the story was going. I let the characters lead, each day sitting down to a blank page with no other goal than to let them play whatever they wanted to play, say whatever they wanted to say.
Last year during #1000wordsofsummer I wrote a short story called How A Family Grows. It was recently published by Pile Press, a literary magazine for women and non-binary creatives. It was the first and only submission for this story - finding a home so quickly is both a joy and a fluke.
I’m going to do something a little different with this month’s newsletter, and share my story with you, but before I do, I want to tell you about Iris.
When I started writing on day 1 of the challenge, it was Iris who spoke. A 13-year-old girl born in the ‘80s in Texas. She wanted to tell me about a terrible secret involving her baby brother. She was named after the flower, a sword-like stalk that blooms beautifully for only a day or two before the blossoms shrivel like aged flesh. Iris was the Greek goddess of the rainbow, and the flower represents valor and wisdom.
As we enter into another summer, I wish for you the bravery needed to face whatever necessary, and the wisdom to stand in your truth regardless of whoever may try to knock you down. And now, for a story. Want to hear me read it? Click the button at the top of this newsletter.
How A Family Grows
THE FIRST TIME I asked Mel for a baby, they said, Not right now, love. Too much to do. Not enough time to do it. Their face was lit by the blue of a screen, eyes frozen and far away.
I collected my private tears in a small jelly jar and went for a walk. Our dog followed, as did our two cats, tails in question marks. Their warm eyes said, Mother, where are we going?
To the woods, children.
I collected a bundle of kindling for the firepit, wild rose hips for tea, and catmint for the cats. The dog found a dead rabbit and carried it back to the yard like a somber omen. Inside our house, after all the bellies were full and Mel sat by the fire with one of their many screens, I propagated three plants from our garden. I placed the sprigs in the jelly jar, full of tears and wishes, and left it on the window sill.
THE SECOND TIME I asked Mel for a baby, it was the next day, dark in our bed before the sun but not before the birds.
Mel, I said quietly into the warm shadows of birdsong. I want a child. Someone to love as I should have been loved. Someone for us to love together.
They slept all the deeper and did not reply, but their silence was answer enough. I wept quietly in the bathroom until I was soaked. I sat in the tub so my tears would wash away. When I went downstairs to make coffee, my skin sparkled in salt.
Something of a wonder greeted me. The dog whined at my knee, his brown eyes worried. Green invaders. Long vines of intrusion. The sprigs on the sill were no longer small slips of greenery from ordinary houseplants but had become, overnight, a flourish of leaf and vine, the jelly jars overflowing with pale, spindly roots. I gathered pots and soil and gave each green child a home.
After work I built a fire in the pit behind our house. I drank a glass of wine and imagined I was a mother. I could hear my child’s laughter tinkling like fireflies dancing across the lawn, little fairy footprints flattening blades of grass.
Mel, I said, when they came and sat beside me. Is your heart not big enough?
It’s plenty big, they said. It’s not that. It’s about money. It’s about space. We have so little of both.
But we have the sky, I said, and all the earth below. The woods will be our playpen!
A cat sat on each of our laps, our dog in between. Mel stroked her soft head and the felines filled the space between us with something akin to contentment.
Maybe, they said. One day.
One day when?
One day soon.
Not soon enough, I cried. My tears salted the last few drops of wine, filled the glass to the brim. I splashed the contents to the ground by the backdoor steps and put myself to bed, alone and cold.
DAR, SAID MEL in the morning, a soft hand on my shoulder. You have to come see this!
A vine, as thick as an arm, snaked up the side of our house. It had rooted overnight beneath the backdoor steps, and sprouted tall and thick, sending tendrils across the stone, shoots up and over the roof.
Our very own beanstalk!, marveled Mel. The dog barked warily, but I had nothing to say.
I went to take a bath but found the tub full of moss and ferns. A forest floor awash with life, new and green and fresh. Lichen splayed across the tiles in patches of baby blue and mint green. A fern, the tallest of the bunch, trembled as the cat peeked through and said good morning.
Something very strange is going on, said Mel. Beautiful. But strange.
At that very moment, I asked for the third time.
Mel, my love. Please. I want a child. With you. Let us have a baby. Before we are too old.
Dar, my love. It is true. We are almost too old. Not only do we lack money and space, and the energy of youth, but what of the world?
The world needs children.
But children do not need this world.
I began to violently weep.
Dar, said Mel. Are you lacking in love? We are a family already.
Mel embraced me, held me fast against their chest. The dog came and slipped his head beneath my hand, and the cats, too, wormed softly through our legs and rested on our feet.
WHEN MEL WENT to work, I called in sick. I laid in the center of the living room rug and cried myself to sleep, but even in sleep, my tears flowed. I woke floating in a shallow pool, like Alice behind a locked door, trapped and afraid but also curious and amazed.
Did I cry all this?
From the sofa the dog and the cats looked at me, bewildered and put out.
I waded into the kitchen for a bucket and found the outdoor vine pushed through the windows, climbing along the ceilings through doorways and up the stair banister. The jelly jar plants, though only snipped a few days ago, were now in full glory, their foliage having swelled into a dense growth filling the corners of our home. A peek into the bathroom revealed the moss and ferns and lichen covering all surfaces and spilling out onto the hardwood floor in the hall.
Was it my tears? I asked the dog and the two cats. They only blinked back at me, waiting to see what I might do next. I thought of running into the woods. I thought of calling an exterminator. I thought of walking into the adoption agency and demanding an infant. I did none of those things. This is what I did. I walked out the door. I climbed the vine to the roof of our house, and then I kept on climbing. I climbed into the sky, until no one on earth could find me.
***
THE FIRST TIME Dar asked me for a baby, my heart cinched and then shattered. Oh how I wanted to give them what they most desired. But how? With what? I could only see the overflow of the undone. Lists of goals left to be achieved. Stacks of bills still unpaid. Our tiny house, cozy but worn, full of drafts. And then there was the state of the world. Skies full of smoke. Lake beds cracked, littered with bone. The sound of gunfire echoing through the trees.
No, I thought. Better to be happy and satisfied with what we have. I tucked that shared desire into a small box at the bottom of my heart.
My Dar is a dreamer. A believer in magical thinking. They say, Put a wish into the Universe and that wish will come true! Or rather, so it seems, a garden will grow.
The second time Dar asked for a baby, I wanted to cry along with them, but I am the strong one. Dar shouted, Life is not fair! And I agreed, silently and alone behind a closed door.
Everywhere Dar goes, life follows. The animals are drawn to them, domestic and wild. I’ve seen a bird land on the back of Dar’s chair while they read, and pluck hairs from their head to adorn a nest. Dar brings green things into the house, and right away, the greenlings grow and bloom. I half worry an infant will spring fully formed from Dar’s mind, if only they think and wish and dream hard and long enough.
The third time Dar asked for a baby, I left for work but drove in the opposite direction. I drove all the way to the sea and back, and I thought all the thoughts I needed to think. On the way to the sea, I worried about guns and famine, poisoned soil and land fires. I fretted over draughts and wars and inflation, kidnapping and incurable diseases. But on my return to the woods, I dared to imagine. I let myself dream of birthday parties with chocolate frosting and graduations with yellow streamers. I dreamed up elaborate festivities for holidays, bowls of snacks under cozy blankets for Friday nights. I thought of the breads and pies Dar would bake, of the treehouse I might build around the great white pine. No amount of love will keep a child safe, not in this world or any other, but to be honest with myself was to admit, I wanted a child, too.
DAR! I CALLED their name and banged on the door. It was pinned shut, latched by tendrils. The dog barked from inside. The cats sat in the windows and cried, pawing at the filigreed panes. I fetched a ladder and wrench, pried open a window, which had grown shut from the inside, and crawled through the leaves into the house.
A jungle! A wild forest of vine and foliage! Every surface was verdant, effervescent with life. There were tendrils and shoots, leaves of every shape and hue - some fleshy and thick, others transparent - all greedy for sun, and water, and air.
I climbed through the house and called Dar’s name, but no sweet voice came in reply. I heard only the quiet rustle of growth, the delicate motor of bees and thrum of hummingbirds.
That night I camped in the yard, snuggled with the animals inside a tent. We’ll look for Dar in the morning, I said, and none of us slept much, all of us listening for their return.
I woke fitfully, ill-rested before the sun but not before the birds. Another sound, foreign to the morning, pricked my ears. The dog heard it, too, and cocked his head toward the house. A murmur, something like a coo, a sniffle, and a sigh. The cats sat up and flicked their questioning tails.
We followed the sounds, which grew louder by the open window. I used a vine to haul myself inside, and crawled through the dense growth from room to room. Another sniffle. A tiny sigh. A bantam coo. And then a cry, vexed and full of need.
By the hearth in the living room, a purple vine uncoiled in full bloom, its posies unfolding two and three at a time. As each lavender flower peeled open to reveal a tangerine center, spoked in stamen, a sound released. A sniffle. A sigh. A coo. From somewhere else, the sound of a baby balling.
I continued to crawl and climb, to pick my way into the kitchen where saucer-sized blooms unfurled into powder pink puffs that giggled. I peeked into the kitchen where lilies and orchids opened into satisfied smacks. I made my way to the bedroom where a lime green shrub with heart shaped leaves was birthing crimson trumpets, each one sounding a great clamor of hunger. The house was overwhelmingly full.
Disoriented and exhausted, missing Dar, and feeling terrified and full of regret for not sharing my heart, I collapsed to the floor and fainted dead away.
***
I CLIMBED DOWN from the sky, sat on the roof, and marveled at our garden-covered house. The dog barked at me from below, so excited that his body wagged him off his feet more than once as I climbed down.
I rubbed his soft ears and said, Where is Mel? He ran to the window and barked again.
The greenery was overwhelming, every surface cool and damp. The air smelled of water and life and soil. I found Mel in the bedroom in a patch of melons.
Mel, I said. I’m back. Wake up my love. And they did, pulling me into their arms.
I’m sorry, said Mel. Please don’t leave.
I will always come back, I said, and squeezed them in return.
We can have a child, said Mel.
I understand why you do not want to, I said. I’ve made my peace with it.
No. Mel shook their head and a thin, chartreuse tendril quivered from their hair. We can do it. With you, I can do it. I’m ready.
Really?
Yes.
And a melon tapped beside us. We both looked, placed our hands on the round belly of the fruit. It tapped again, a little knock from the inside. We looked at each other and then back at the melon. Another tapped, and then another. There were three, swollen and ripe, a sweet nectar leaking from where they cracked off their vine.
Should we open them?, asked Mel.
Let’s wait and watch, I said.
The dog came and sat with us, the cats, too. We listened to the tapping, the knocks followed by soft exhalations and something akin to a gurgle. And then the first split open. A child, smooth and slick. And then a second. Then a third.
And we were a family.
